


Some Things You Just Can’t Say

by hollowbirds (torturousthings)



Series: is it true? [1]
Category: Panic! at the Disco
Genre: M/M, Oneshot, Ryden, Rydon, myrtle beach, myrtle beach lore, you know thats what it is
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-24
Updated: 2018-10-24
Packaged: 2019-08-07 02:59:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16400078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/torturousthings/pseuds/hollowbirds
Summary: Sometimes, all it takes is a midnight swim to change someone's outlook on life.A midnight swim, and a boy whose eyes he'll never get tired of rediscovering.





	Some Things You Just Can’t Say

**Author's Note:**

> hey! there are a lot of non-panic characters in this oneshot, so I figured I'd just list them here for convenience and to avoid confusion :') 
> 
> Greta & Bob - Members of The Hush Sound, supporting act for Panic! during their 2006 tour. 
> 
> Amanda & Brian - Members of The Dresden Dolls, the other supporting act. 
> 
> Dream, Dusty & Roger - Members of the Lucent Dossier troupe, the performers/dancers who were on stage when Panic! played. Dream is the director of the troupe. 
> 
> that's all! i hope you enjoy this fic, i had so much fun writing it! there are little references to ryan's lj post throughout, feel free to look for them & leave a comment if you'd like!

I never thought we’d be in huge, tinted-window buses and play sold-out arenas. All I wanted was a little better than mediocre success, tour in a shitty van with a dubious radio and the same two CDs. I already had them picked out in my head, on the first day we were told we were booked for that tour with Acceptance; first, Counting Crows’ _Hard Candy —_ a no-brainer. That record is a masterpiece, and it belongs in every single car radio, to play whenever, wherever. You can never really go wrong with Duritz. 

 

The other would’ve been one of those coverless, marker-stained burned disks I made by myself in my bedroom, one night where I simply _had_ to have Tom Waits and American Nightmare follow each other in the track-list. Having to get up to change albums was absolutely unthinkable. 

 

All I wanted was for kids to want to burn our songs onto CDs, someday, just like I did with those artists I looked up to so much. That, and be able to play my not-so-shitty-anymore guitar every night and live off of it. 

 

Technology sure took care of the former. No one’s ever going to burn CDs anymore, and they’ll go out of fashion just like tapes did. It’s all a question of ease. People are lazy. 

 

But maybe one day making a playlist for someone on a computer will be just as romantic as spending hours trying to figure out why your damn CD won’t play. 

 

Who am I kidding? No, it won’t. Just like you can’t mimic the charm of a homemade mixtape, you can’t replace the barely-contained excitement mingled with anxiousness of tracing your beloved’s name in black marker on the shiny surface of the disk, hoping to God it won’t get smudged. 

 

Maybe I’m just a hopeless romantic. 

 

Maybe Third Eye Blind’s self-titled record would’ve been better in the van than _Hard Candy_ after all. I guess we'll never know. 

 

“You coming?” Spencer pokes his head through the tour bus door, which we haven’t bothered to close. It’s almost always open, these days. The bus gets awfully hot if the AC’s not on, which is pretty much anytime we’re not on the road. So we live a literal open door policy, even if it allows Spencer to startle me whenever he feels like it, and that’s too often for my taste. If I had a couple more years of heavy smoking and drinking behind me, I’d be terribly familiar with heart attacks by now.

 

I ask him where we’re going as I stand up. My limbs are heavy from the shows we’ve been stringing together for four days straight, but I know it’ll get worse if I stay here and wallow in my fatigue. I’m ready to go wherever he wants to take me. Externalise the exhaustion. 

 

“The beach,” he tells me. “They’re all coming, apart from Brian and Dusty.” He looks at me as I move towards him, and he turns around to walk out. “Fuck knows what those two are up to,” he adds, casting me a knowing look over his shoulder. I chuckle and follow him out of the bus; Brian’s had the biggest crush on Dusty ever since they first met, and hasn’t really bothered to hide it. It would be cute if he didn’t remind me so much of how I used to feel about Jac. The stolen looks. The borderline adoration. The contempt and the disdain will follow, eventually. They always do. 

 

I banish the thought from my mind before it can get me down again. 

 

Out. 

 

Out, out, out. 

 

Jac is history, I tell myself. It’s summer, we’re on tour. Thousands of guys would kill to be in our place, with so many girls at our feet every single night. It’s the perfect occasion. The dream scenario. Surely I can find someone that’ll help me get my mind off her and her bleached-blond hair. Invite that new girl back to the bus, show her our four-bunked luxury. She’d be impressed, or at least pretend to be. It’s always polite to pretend. 

 

I’d give her an exclusive tour. 

 

_This is the shower we use once every five days._

 

_This is the carpet on which innumerable RedBulls were spilled. Maybe you’ll find whiskey stains if you squint hard enough. Brendon’s the only one who likes whiskey. Brendon’s also the clumsiest one, after me._

 

_This is the sofa on which we’re always sprawled. We have terrible posture._

 

_This is the fridge. Oh, no, honey, you don’t want to open that._

 

Kidding. I wouldn’t have the guts to call her honey. 

 

_These are our unmade bunks._

 

_This is where so many girls have stayed before, in so many different cities. Houston, Dallas. Detroit._

 

And, instead of being jealous, she'll want to do better, because jealousy isn’t sexy these days. She’ll want to be the one I remember, to become the one I write songs about. They always want me to write songs about them. 

 

I never know what to say. I’m not the one who speaks the words; I just pen them. There’s a reason for that. If you wanted talk, you should’ve gone to Brendon, not me. He’ll talk. 

 

It’s dark outside when we join the little group huddled beneath one of the lampposts lining the street, just far enough down House of Blues so that the fans won’t find us. Greta smiles at me, sweet as ever, but Jon doesn’t seem happy to see me appear at all. 

 

“Didn’t even have to try, dude,” Spencer grins victoriously and extends his hand, eyes reduced to two chinks. “He just followed me. Zero convincing needed.” 

 

Oh. It’s a bet. 

 

“Fuck you,” Jon lets out, slapping a crumpled bill into Spencer’s open palm. He glares at me. “And you, you couldn’t just say no for once?” 

 

Dream snorts and Brendon leans towards me as the group starts moving down the road, towards the beach. “That was a hundred bucks,” he tells me quietly before I can ask. 

 

“Shouldn’t have bet on me,” I shrug, and he chuckles. A hundred dollars isn’t much compared to the thousands we’ve bet with in the past, but Jon’s been losing a lot these days. Mustn’t feel that great, but the best way of winning it back is betting more. It’s an addiction. _I’ll get it back, one day._

 

The mile-long walk to the beach takes longer than it should because Bob is a little tipsy and keeps straying off path, and Spencer manages to make us think we’re lost even though it’s basically a straight line to the sea. Imagine what doubt can do once planted in a mind. Now multiply it by nine; imagine nine people not sure whether we were irremediably lost or not. 

 

Until Spencer confessed that it was the right path. I could’ve killed him. Zack almost did. 

 

When we finally get there almost forty minutes later, Brendon takes one look at the water and immediately suggests going for a swim. The proposition is met with overwhelming enthusiasm, and it doesn’t surprise me. Everyone’s damp from the walk and the show, most of us not having had the occasion to shower yet. Cool water is most welcome right now. 

 

And then, the question of swimsuits comes up. Inevitably. Dream brings it up, I think, and we all shake our heads no. No one has their swimsuit, what, do you think we’re _responsible_? That’s funny. Responsibility vanishes the second I nod, smile goodbye to the last fans agglutinated by the tour bus and retreat to my cave these days. After that, I don’t think about anything else but sleeping. Swimming in the ocean was never part of the plan. 

 

I look at the dark expanse of water as they argue about how to go by this, and I wonder if there are any jellyfish in there. Probably. I used to be terrified that they’d shock me to death, those little shapeless blobs, but I’m not scared anymore. Incredible what growing up does to you. 

 

They come to the inescapable conclusion that skinny dipping is probably the best thing to do. I’ve taken my shoes and socks off, rolled my pant legs up and walked up to the shoreline, that place where the sand is so packed with water that it’ll run between your toes, thousands of grains at a time. 

 

It’s silent for a few moments, apart from the muted rustling of fabric being yanked off of bodies, eager to get to the water. It’s peaceful, almost. More so than anything I’ve had in the past months, anyway. 

 

“Ryan!” Greta calls from further back, where they’re still all stripping at various paces. Little piles of clothes now litter the beach, their owners standing by them half-naked. “You’re not swimming?” 

 

I shake my head at her, even though I’m not sure whether she can see me under the weak light of the only lamppost, back by the sea wall. Maybe the moonlight’s enough. 

 

“Aw, come on,” Spencer says. Well, at least _he_ saw me.

 

“What, you bet on me again?” I call back at him. “What is it, that I’d swim naked or that I’d swim at all?” 

 

I see Spencer pull down his own pants before standing back up swiftly in all his underwear glory. 

 

“I can’t believe you think I’m that kind of friend,” he says loudly and even though I can’t see his face, I can imagine his fake-offended expression far too well. So I flip him off and turn back to the sea, taking a few steps forward until the water’s at my calves. 

 

Soon enough, I hear footsteps get closer to me, stifled because of the wet sand and the bare feet. 

 

“Okay, who the fuck suggested this?” Someone says as soon as they get into the water. I hear Brendon and Jon laugh, and one of the girls yelps. It’s true that the water’s colder than I expected it to be. It laps against my legs in small waves, and I silently am grateful for not having taken most of my clothes off like the others did. I did take hypothermia into consideration, but self-consciousness was definitely number one on my _Why I Shouldn’t Swim Naked_ list. We can’t all be like Brendon. 

 

Greta run-splashes past me, followed by Bob and Dream, all stark-naked and anxious to get further into the water, hoping it’ll conceal their complete lack of clothes. Roger and Amanda venture into the water as well, only they’ve kept their underwear on. An overwhelming minority of sensible people. 

 

Zack appears by my side but says nothing. He’s fully clothed, in contrast to my three bandmates, who also walk past me. Spencer casts me an overly disappointed look over his bare shoulder, but I don’t react. It’s not like I haven’t seen them naked before. Being in the same band means that some social boundaries _will_ be crossed at some point. 

 

We stand in silence for a while. Well, as much silence as the others will grant us, which is truthfully not a lot. They’re splashing each other like kids, laughing and shrieking when the water hits them, almost like they didn’t expect it to actually be cold. It’s nice, in a way, to see them all act like that. To know that we can do stupid shit together. 

 

“I fucking hate that purple hoodie of Brendon’s,” Zack says out of nowhere, and it makes me laugh. His tone is so neutral, too, like he just told me something completely unsurprising, like that our tour bus looks like a college dorm, but worse. He told us that, once. Brendon took it as a compliment; Spencer just laughed. 

 

“That’s tragic,” I say. “Don’t tell him that. It’ll break his heart.” 

 

Zack snickers and I see the figures of who must be Greta and Bob pretty far away from shore. The others have calmed down and are just floating there, six heads poking out from the relatively calm water, waves crashing on their faces from time to time. They’re talking, or playing some game that I don’t bother to figure out the rules of. 

 

They get bored of it pretty fast, though, so it’s probably not that interesting. 

 

And Dream says, “I’m cold.” 

 

Jon and Roger agree. It does get cold when you’re not moving. 

 

Greta pads back towards them, followed by a coughing Bob, who’s trying his best to stay afloat. That’s a guy who looks like he’s just been through some shit. Spencer asks what happened. 

 

“He almost died back there,” she says, but the smile on her face makes it sound okay. “The waves kept washing over his face but I just— I couldn’t help him, you know? Not when I’m—”

 

“In deep sea?” Amanda suggests.

 

“Completely naked?” Roger says at the same time, which earns him a smack from his boss. 

 

“Yes, that,” Greta says, pointing at Roger, almost like she’s too shy to say the word _naked_. Roger raises his eyebrows at Dream, who grins at him sheepishly. 

 

“Anyway, I’m fine now,” Bob adds, but he looks exhausted and the tipsiness from earlier has clearly completely vanished. His hair is pasted to his forehead. “But I think I’m going to head back. Pretty sure I got some water in my lungs.”

 

And that’s the catalyst. Suddenly, they all want to head back. They’re tired, they’re cold. The ocean got boring. Zack goes with them, and I tell him that I’ll catch up later. One of the upsides of having Zack trust you? He leaves you alone when you ask him to. He’s really good at that. 

 

And that’s how I end up walking along the shoreline alone, looking at the moon hanging over the sea like a big, unblinking eye. It sees everything, even the things invisible to us lowly humans. Feelings. Stories. Love. 

 

“Hey,” a voice says from behind me, and I turn around to see Brendon standing there in his stupid purple hoodie that Zack hates. I didn’t hear him at all; it’s probably because of the water. 

 

“You didn’t go back with the others?” 

 

I know I saw him leave with them, though.

 

Brendon shakes his head as I resume walking, and he catches up to me, matching his step with mine. I glance sideways. The hoodie is more of a lilac colour after all. 

 

“I didn’t really wanna leave,” he says. 

 

I say nothing, so he speaks again. “Why wouldn’t you swim with us?” 

 

I look at him, and for a second I don’t really know what to say, because I actually do want to swim now that it's quiet and calm. The ocean’s darker than the sky, even though I know it’s because it’s simply reflecting it. The moonlight shines on the water and it’s so beautiful, like some diva spilled her diamonds on the surface of the sea, never bothering to pick them back up. So they just float there, for us to see. 

 

I think of what it must look like during the day, the crowd amassed on the shores. The kids screaming, the mothers yelling. The fathers burning up on their transats. I imagine that, and I’m thankful that I’m only getting to see it empty and dark. It’s so much better with no one around. 

 

“I kind of want to swim now,” I confess, and a smile plays across Brendon’s lips. I swear something in his eyes lights up. 

 

He offers to swim with me, but I know it’s not a question. So he does, he swims with me, but this time around he keeps his underwear on, probably because I do. Our clothes are abandoned on the shore, not too far from where I left my shoes the first time around. His lilac hoodie is somehow visible from this far away. 

 

Brendon sticks his head underwater and convinces me to do the same. We do a breath holding contest, and I win by a long shot. He accuses me of having bigger lungs. I remark that he’s the singer, and that shuts him up for a little while. 

 

Sometimes I catch myself looking at him, and there’s no way I can deny he’s beautiful. You’d have to be blind to miss it. 

 

It’s a different kind of beauty than when he’s onstage, though. Onstage, the lights make it look like he’s the one everyone should pay attention to, and that’s exactly what we need. All eyes on him, because he’s the show. He’s the prettiest of us all, the eye candy. And that makes him beautiful in the untouchable way. It deifies him, and I’m sure girls in the crowd have that figured out by now. He’s their sweaty, attractive, unreachable god. Under the stage lights, he’s not real. 

 

But here, now, with the water up to his waist and his hair soaked, silver droplets strewing his skin, his shoulderblades, he looks so real, he looks like he always belonged in this picture. Like he’s the prince of Atlantis, underwater kingdom, deigning to grace the surface with his presence only once every century. Just to remind us that he's still here. 

 

I want to tell him that, but I don’t. It seems like there are always things I want to say to him that I never do, and I’m not quite sure why, because I trust him. I do. 

 

I think I’m just afraid he’ll take them the wrong way. 

 

_Hey, you’re beautiful._

 

You don’t say that to people. That’s stupid. 

 

Later, when we’re somewhat clothed and mostly dry, sitting in the sand, I tell him, 

 

“I wish I was spontaneous.” 

 

Ironically, it catches me off guard, but I keep going because that felt good somehow. “I wish I could do things in the spur of the moment and never have to regret them or deal with the consequences.” 

 

“Fuck consequences,” Brendon says after a brief silence. That makes me look at him, to try and detect the hint of sarcasm in his eyes, but I don’t find it. It may be because of the dark and because the moon is treacherous in its light, but I choose to just roll with it. Sometimes it’s better not to think too much, so I let Brendon’s voice fill my head, like I do so often onstage. I smile as I look up at the night sky. Yeah, fuck consequences. 

 

It’s as easy to say as it is hard to believe. 

 

“Be as spontaneous as you want, ‘cause there’s nothing after this, Ry. There’s only right now and you gotta grab onto that. We’re getting older by the second.” 

 

I look at my hands. “Doesn’t that scare you?” 

 

It scares me shitless, but I don’t tell him that. The fact that I’ll never be able to come back and fix my mistakes, or fix the things I didn’t do at all. Those moments are gone, gone forever, just like the sand slipping between your toes. All gone. It’s terrifying. Anyone I know would agree. Time is the scariest thing of all. 

 

But him, he says something different. Of course he does. 

 

He says, “No. 

 

No, I’m not scared. Because every moment has the potential to become better than the last, and I have the power to make that happen. To make it better. It’s all up to me. You should live because you want to, Ry, not because you’re afraid of consequences." He pauses, as though to contemplate the ocean, but I know he's trying to gather his thoughts, because they have a tendency to spill all over the place like a knocked-over glass of water. "You’ll never live the same moment twice, and that’s a beautiful thing. That’s why you need to cherish every second. You’ll never get it again, but that’s okay. It’s not a bad thing.” 

 

I say nothing, because I want to learn to live like that but I’m not sure how to explain it to him with the right words. So I don’t, and he doesn’t feel the need to add anything. He’s made his point, and he knows I get it. And that’s enough for both of us. Silences were never a problem. 

 

When I look up to the sky, I see that the stars are moving fast tonight, faster than I’ve ever seen them. They look like they’re chasing something they’ll never catch, and they make me feel small, so small. I tell Brendon that, even if I’m not sure why. Even if I don’t know whether he wants to hear this at all. Maybe he doesn’t. Maybe now he’s just thinking about the bed he’ll probably share with some girl tonight. How he won’t wake up alone. 

 

I wake up alone, these days. With Jac gone, I realised just how much I was keeping her around by fear of loneliness. And now, I wake up alone. I wonder if it's for the best. 

 

Brendon tells me that it’s been so long since he’s seen this many stars. “I didn’t know how much I missed it, but fuck, I did.” 

 

So did I. I’d forgotten. “The lights in LA are too bright.” 

 

I see him nod from the corner of my eye. “Yeah. I used to drive out to the desert by myself sometimes, back in Vegas.” He chuckles. “My mom swore I’d get myself murdered out there someday.” 

 

“Maybe you did,” I say, and I look at him. Our shoulders are pressed together, like we’re trying to get some warmth that neither of us need. It’s summer, it’s South Carolina. We’re just this close because it feels nice. Because there’s still sea salt on our skin, because the warm breeze is softly blowing through our wet hair, drying it effortlessly. Because summer effaces boundaries and brings people together. 

 

I see a smile appear on Brendon’s lips, and he says, “Maybe I did. Maybe I’m a ghost.” He pauses and worries his lower lip, pensive. “Or maybe I’m in a coma and all of this is a dream.” 

 

He tears his eyes from the ocean and his face turns to me.  His eyes are dark despite the moonlight washing over us.  “And there are no consequences in dreams,” he breathes, and I can almost hear his heart rate pick up. Brendon’s gaze travels up my face, lingering on my mouth, shamelessly. And when he’s finally up to my eyes, he says, almost in a whisper, “Right?” 

 

And I think about what he said, about having the power to make things a little better, about having only right now to live in. 

 

So I answer him by closing the distance between us, by letting our mouths collide in a way they never have before. He’s not surprised; his lips are warm, tasting of the sea. He kisses me softly, almost like he’s not sure he wants this, but there’s no way he doesn’t. Not with that look he had in his eyes, not with the way he grabs my face and deepens the kiss, leaning backwards into the sand and pulling me on top of him. His tongue finds mine and I run my hands on his body, tugging the zipper of the hoodie open to expose his bare chest. His skin is burning up under my fingertips, and he lets me explore every inch of it. Now the ocean is gone, it's just him. Him and I, kids beneath a starry sky, driven by something so deeply rooted in us that we can barely think. It doesn’t feel wrong, at that moment, it feels like it’s exactly right, like it’s the best decision I’ve ever made in my life, and I can’t believe it took me so long to make it. 

 

And right then, under the South Carolina moonlight, I truly believe I’m completely, hopelessly, irremediably in love with him. 

**Author's Note:**

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